Berlin has been one of the main lenders to Greece during its debt
crisis and while conservative parties said that supporting Greece would
come at the cost of the German taxpayer, new figures show Germany has
made money on the crisis.
According to German newspaper The Local, the German
government released figures on Thursday in response to parliamentary
question from the Green Party which show that Germany has made €2.9
billion in interest payments on Greek bonds since 2010.
Since 2010 Germany has been buying Greek government bonds as part of
an EU deal to prop up the struggling Greek economy. The bonds were
bought by the Bundesbank and then transferred to the federal treasury.
Initial agreements with the government in Athens set out that any
interest earned on the bonds would be paid back to Greece when it
fulfilled its reform obligations.
But the figures published by the government on Thursday show that
Germany made €3.4 billion in interest payments on the bonds and only
paid Greece €527 million in 2013 and €387 million the following year.
That left €2.5 billion in profit, plus interest of €400 million on a
loan from the KfW development bank.
The Green party have responded to the figures by calling for debt relief for Greece.
“Contrary to all the myths spread by people on the right, Germany has
profited massively from the crisis in Greece,” said Green MP
Sven-Christian Kindler.

ATHENS — A Greek Air Force jet crashed into the Aegean Sea on Thursday, killing the pilot, as he returned from a mission to intercept Turkish aircraft that had violated the country’s airspace, Greek officials said.

The Turkish government did not comment publicly about the accusations of an encounter. The state-run Anadolu news agency quoted unnamed military officials as disputing scattered reports that there had been a dogfight between jets from the two countries and denying that any Turkish Air Force jet had been in the area.

Greek officials said nothing about what might have caused the crash, or whether it was connected to a confrontation with Turkish jets, though they stressed that the crash occurred several kilometers from the site of the interception mission.